La vie en Rose 🥀

What better place to stop and smell the roses than in Sète and today we are going to follow Gerard around and really get to know this town. Gerard is retired and Claudia works for the Mairie ( council ) in Montpellier but today is working from home .

While walking down to the Market place we passed several little stages and seating. Today is the festival of poetry and they were taking the poets out in to the streets. We even saw them out on the water reading poetry

Gerard ordered Sèche from one stall and while they were preparing them for him he went to another that specialised in shell fish and bought some mussels and another strange creature called ‘Le pomme de terre de la mer’ The potatoe of the sea. *Those crabs were still alive*

All under the same roof there was a different section for every type of food

Christine and I had coffee outside while Gerard took the fish back home to put in the fridge. Watching tourists being led around by a guide with a little flag is amusing

Then 100 metres further along was Gerard’s boat , parked in the main canal

Gerard is shopping for tonight’s meal and he knows exactly what he wants. We are taking the boat across the Étang ( lake ) to the home of the very famous Bouzigues oysters

The jousting ( joutes ) basin. Started by the Crusaders , ( for jousting practice )and held here since the ports creation in 1666. Gerard used to be one of the jousters

There’s hundred of huge oyster farms on the Etang and these are the ones we wanted

Each farm had its own processing plant

Gerard speaks no English and when my limited French is insufficient we use Mr Google . It’s really quite amusing

By the time we got home Claudia had finished work so we jumped on our bikes and went down to the beach for a swim. Well, we nearly all did. The water was a bit cold for one of us